On
the reserves our main duty was to monitor the wild dogs which
are an endangered species. There are only 350-450 of them left
in South Africa and ¼ of that population are in the
Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park!

We went out in the 4x4 twice every day
and used telemetry to track them, enabled by the fact that some
of the dogs have VHF collars on them. These collars are crucial
pieces of equipment in tracking but only last a couple of years
before they need replacing and you need at least one collar per
pack of dogs. Preferably the alpha pair plus one other dog in
each pack would be collared but they are very expensive, so a lot
of fundraising has to be done for this ideal situation to become
reality. By volunteering, some of the money I paid to go on the
project goes into the conservation of these animals, e.g.
towards collars.

Tracking can also be done using tracks on the
ground which was best at Tembe where there is soft sand
everywhere so there are plenty of tracks to see. However, this
is very time-consuming, is far from an exact science (e.g. exact
age of a track is hard to predict and there are so many factors
to consider) and is also a lot of hard work! At the other parks
where the roads were mainly tar or dirt the tracks are less easy
to spot or non-existent!

It is so important to monitor them,
especially on a park like Mkhuze where they have a lot of
problems with snares in which the dogs accidently get caught
(the poachers are generally aiming for antelope). If this is not
picked up on quickly the poachers may kill the dog for food
whereas if Wildlife Act get there first the dog can be saved. It
was truly heartbreaking to see a couple of dogs with only three
legs. They cope extremely well but they shouldn’t be put in this
position! It is so hard to stop poachers from entering, but
there is only the one pack of dogs at Mkhuze and in the last
year it has decreased in size from 16 to 9, so if this pack is
lost they will not be able to restart it as it will be deemed
too dangerous for the dogs.

The Project is responsible
for moving dogs between some of the reserves as often the reason
for them trying to escape the confines of the reserve or for
leaving their pack and wandering into trouble is while looking
for other dogs of the opposite sex with which to form a new
pack. It seems that life as a wild dog is never dull! Only the
Alpha female is supposed to get pregnant but we have had two
other females become pregnant in my time out there so now there
is the issue of whether or not the new Alpha will let these
other pups survive as she will want all pups to be hers. With
species numbers low it is important that this does not happen
but you can’t just explain this to a wild dog!

The Project is currently campaigning to get the name ‘wild dog’ changed
to ‘painted dog’ as this will go some way in giving them a
better reputation. Currently their bad reputation is partly due
to the way they kill as they eat their prey alive. However,
although it sounds more gruesome, it actually kills the animal
quicker than if killed by, say, a lion.

At Mkhuze we also
monitored cheetah. Did you know that cheetah’s hunting success
rate is only about 10%? They may be the fastest land animal but
they can only keep this up for a very short amount of time so
have to get very close to their prey before ambushing it! Life
is much harder for them than you first think!

Accommodation on the reserves was more civilised than I had
expected and I even had a washing machine on two out of the
three reserves, however, one of the ovens took three times as
long to cook anything as a normal oven! There were only between
3 and 5 volunteers on each reserve so it really felt as if you
were part of the team!

As well as tracking the animals and
writing notes about the sightings (location, time, date and
behaviour seen) we also pumped up the vehicle tyres, cleaned the
vehicle, fed an impala quarter to two wild dogs in the boma (an
enclosure where new dogs go when first at the park as an
introductory step) at Hluhluwe, painted a large food chute for
the boma at Tembe, painted a kitchen floor in the new extension
at Mkhuze, cleaned up the new camp in iMfolozi, inputted the
data we collected into a database on the computer, tagged camera
trap photos and created identity kits for some of the puppies
and their parents at Hluhluwe.

I really enjoyed all this work,
especially making the ID kits as it really helped me to learn
how to distinguish each dog and getting a left and right side
photo of each dog (while making sure it is the same dog) is
harder than it sounds!

I learnt a lot about all the
animals plus you can’t beat the practical education of observing
how they interact with their own and other species in the wild.
Other animals I was lucky enough to see included leopard (a
mother and two cubs in the dark but was still an amazing
sighting!), an aardvark, black rhino, hyena and a steenbok (a
small antelope which is fairly rare) plus the more ‘normal’
giraffe, zebra, lion, elephant, white rhino, buffalo, impala,
nyala, kudu, monkeys (vervet, samango and baboons), wildebeest,
warthog, vultures and countless birds!

I cannot describe to you
just how incredible the sense of being there is, surrounded by
all the sounds of the bush, with the animals in their natural
habitat! Mind blowing doesn’t quite cover it! A highlight was
seeing the wild dogs take on a hyena right next to the vehicle!
Thankfully no-one was injured, the dogs were just teasing him!

On the marine conservation week, I stayed in a volunteer
house and when the weather permitted we went out on the boat.
This is a controversial area due to the increase in shark
attacks but the boat does not actually feed the sharks, it just
puts fish scents into the water to attract them. Also, the boat
does not anchor near the beach where people may be put at risk.

Every time we went out a record was kept of how many sharks we
saw and whether they had any distinguishing features plus an
estimate of their size. Volunteers were responsible for getting
wetsuits ready and handing them out, looking after anyone who
felt seasick, helping people in and out of the cage, cleaning
the boat and anything else that needed doing!

This
experience has been very rewarding and a great learning curve
that I will never forget. I have met people from all corners of
the world (nearly!): Holland, Australia, Germany, America,
Canada, Ireland, France, Switzerland, England and, of course,
South Africa, and of all ages! I have gained so much confidence
without even realising it at the time and have never done as
much cooking in my entire life as two of us ended up cooking for
8 people when neither of us normally cook much at home!

It was
my first time abroad on my own so I thought I would do it in
style and have become so much more independent and more sure of
myself while out there!

I would definitely recommend this type
of volunteer work to everyone out there and will certainly be
doing more in the future!